252 Winter vs Summer Fruit Tree Pruning, Container Drainage, Cool Vegetables

Show Transcript

GB 252 TRANSCRIPT Winter vs Summer Fruit Tree Pruning, etc

Farmer Fred

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.

Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.

Farmer Fred

Today, we talk on three winter garden topics with Quentyn Young, Sacramento County Master Gardener, Landscape Designer, and former nursery manager.

First off, Quentyn discusses the importance of pruning your deciduous fruit trees during the spring and summer, instead of the winter.

Then, we talk about many gardener’s winter vexation, potted plants that aren’t draining after a rainstorm. He has several ideas on how to fix that.

Finally, Quentyn has some ideas for unusual cool season vegetables and edible flowers that you can be growing right now in USDA Zones 8 and 9. Maybe Zone 7, too, with some protection.

We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!

Winter vs Summer Fruit Tree Pruning

Farmer Fred

It's winter. Should you be pruning your deciduous fruit trees? We've talked a lot about on the show about the value of summer pruning of deciduous fruit trees. A deciduous fruit tree is one that loses its leaves in the winter. We're talking about peaches, plums, cherries, apples, you name it. If it loses its leaves and produces fruit in the summertime, it's probably a deciduous fruit tree. And Summer pruning has a lot of value to it because you're pruning before the buds are set. Basically, you're pruning that tree after you've harvested the fruit. What about winter pruning? People have talked about winter pruning. It has its place, it has its value. But should that be your primary pruning season, in the wintertime? We're talking with Quentyn Young, landscape designer and Master Gardener. We're at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center here in Sacramento County. We are standing next to a deciduous pomegranate which is a very nicely trellised, Q. That's really pretty.

Quentyn Young

Thanks. Yeah, that's a pomegranate espalier.

Farmer Fred

Excellent job. Alright, winter pruning. You have all sorts of fruit trees here. Talk a little bit about the fruit trees that are here.

Quentyn Young

We've got plums, we got peaches. We have apples, cherries, we have figs, we have citrus trees,  pears, Asian pears, we've got atemoyas, we have guavas, we have avocados, we have a whole range of fruit trees here.

Farmer Fred

Some more successful than others.

Quentyn Young

Yes, we're always pushing the envelope of the tropicals. So you know me on that one.

Farmer Fred

With the exception of citrus, which are evergreen fruit trees, deciduous fruit trees historically have been pruned in the winter time. But we now know that when you prune in the wintertime, you're removing the buds that are going to give you fruit for the following year.

Quentyn Young

That's correct. Most people are over-vigorous on their winter pruning. And then also here at the Horticulture Center we practice what is called “delayed winter pruning” into the summer, in large part to prevent infections in lots of the fresh cuts.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, because rain can spread a lot of diseases.

Quentyn Young

Yeah, especially with cherries and apricots, but also peaches and nectarines as well. Also, our summer pruning allows us to keep the trees smaller, so they're easier to harvest. And it lets us open up the silhouette so that we get fruiting buds from basically top to bottom.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, if you look around the fruit trees here, they're all basically six to seven feet tall. And that's the result of probably pruning twice a year in the spring and summer, once when you're thinning out the fruit. And then once after you've harvested the fruit.

Quentyn Young

That is correct, and on some of the more vigorous ones like the plums and pluots, we sometimes actually will prune them, or we're continually pruning them, at least once a month.

Farmer Fred

When you are pruning, one advantage I can see to winter pruning, is you get a better view of the structure of the tree, you can take out crossing, rubbing or broken branches.

Quentyn Young

That's correct. And so what we recommend is instead of pruning, you mark the branches so that you know what to prune later. So we're going to probably do that with the multi-graft cherry tree which has gotten too big, but we don't want to prune it now. But we're gonna mark the branches with colored tape so that we know which ones to cut later in the year.

Farmer Fred

Is this an example of what you would have called what you just called, “delayed winter pruning”?

Quentyn Young

That is a perfect example, because we know it's probably going to rain, hopefully, some more. And we don't want those fresh cuts to get affected when the rains come.

Farmer Fred

What is it about cherries and apricots that require them to be pruned best in July or August? Do you want those wounds to heal before the rains come?

Quentyn Young

So they don't get things like Eutypa dieback or bacterial canker.  You've seen that cherry tree that leafs out in the spring and then suddenly starts wilting? And everything just sort of dies on the branch? That's an example of die back from usually doing pruning cuts in the winter.

Farmer Fred

The tree heals itself very slowly in the winter, whereas in the summertime, those wounds can heal themselves fairly quickly.

Quentyn Young

That's correct. Yes.

Farmer Fred

Is there any reason to prune a deciduous cherry tree in the wintertime?

Quentyn Young

No. I mean, if you're doing it for safety reasons, that's one thing. Obviously with these storms, if there was some reason you have to cut off a broken branch. I can understand that. But if you're just doing your regular fruit tree pruning, wait until at least March or April.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, you look like here in the orchard. You came out fairly unscathed after that near hurricane force winds hit here in early January.

Quentyn Young

Yeah. And that's another good reason to keep your tree small. You know, a smaller profile means you're going to have less wind resistance. If you go around your neighborhood and look, it's the big trees that went down. The small trees here in the orchard survived really well.

Farmer Fred

Well, there is this big native oak towering over things here.

Quentyn Young

It's true. But that one seemed to do well, too.

Farmer Fred

Okay, that's good. You had more luck than I did. So for people who did have fruit tree damage from falling trees, when should they get at it?

Quentyn Young

If it's for safety reasons, you're gonna have to cut some branches now, but if you can wait, like I said, we do delayed winter pruning, so we'll probably wait until March or April. I think the only exception in the orchard is in February we will prune the fig tree.

Farmer Fred

Fig trees are noted for vigorous upright growth.

Quentyn Young

That's correct. And we'll take that tree down really low, you'd be surprised how hard we take it down, and it doesn't miss a beat.

Farmer Fred

For people who have had bigger trees fall on their deciduous fruit trees, they may have seen damage of broken branches and stripped branches and it has created a large scar perhaps on a larger branch or even on the trunk. When should that be addressed?

Quentyn Young

I would say if you have to address it now then you have to. Because obviously you already have an open wound, you want to make a nice fresh cut at this point and keep your fingers crossed that it compartmentalizes really well. But again, my preference is that you do your pruning in the late spring.

Farmer Fred

As long as you don't prune off the scion, that's the part that's grafted to the root stock, you should be okay. And fruit trees are hardy trees. They'll come back, but they  might take time.

Quentyn Young

Yeah, that's true. They did well without our help, for a millennium. Now they're doing a little bit better with our help.

Farmer Fred

Right. Quentyn Young is a landscape designer and Master Gardener, here at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. We are anxiously waiting warmer days and Harvest Day, which is the first Saturday in August. It's an open garden day. It's the big event. The first Saturday of August here at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center in Fair Oaks, California. First Saturday in August, Q, there'll be a lot of fruit then.

Quentyn Young

There will be a lot and the orchard will look completely different looking then.

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TIPS FOR SOLVING RAIN-SATURATED POTS

Farmer Fred

It's the rainy season and it may be raining where you're living right now. And, when it rains very heavily sometimes, you might notice your trees are surrounded by puddles of water. That's not very healthy for your trees. Let's bring the scope down a little bit and take a look at your potted plants. The plants that grow in containers. Is the water draining through the pot, or not? If it isn't, you've got problems. Quentyn Young is a Sacramento Area garden consultant, landscaper, garden designer, and  pruning specialist. And Quentyn posted on his Instagram feed, @qyounggarden, a picture of a potted Japanese maple, basically swimming in water. The water was not leaving the pot. Q, I have to believe when you got there at your client's house that had the Japanese maple in that pot, and you got your camera and took the picture, it wasn’t currently or recently stopped raining. That water had probably been there a while.

Quentyn Young

Yeah, that was from the storm from New Year's Eve. I just got there 5 days later. So the water had probably been there for almost  week sitting in standing water.

Farmer Fred

And because Japanese maples are deciduous trees, they lose their leaves in the wintertime. Sometimes, without leaves it's hard to tell if it's suffering or not. But I gotta believe that any tree sitting in a large pot where there's floating water in it, it isn't doing the roots any good.

Quentyn Young

No, it's not doing the roots any good. And you can usually tell once you start trying to pour it out, you get that smell from anaerobic decomposition that smells like stinky egg. So yeah, that's kind of a two pronged double strike against it.

Farmer Fred

So whenever it rains, the advice we're trying to get across here, is check your potted plants for standing water.

Quentyn Young

Check your pots. And better yet, in the fall, add to your maintenance list to turn your pots over, tip them over, look to see if the roots have grown through the holes. Do it beforehand, because like I said, I've been so busy with work, it took me a week to get out there. That's not counting how many pots you might have in your yard. And whether you're on vacation, that sort of thing, be pre-emptive.

Farmer Fred

Let's talk about some strategies for keeping that water flowing through the pot. Obviously, you want to have drain holes in the bottom of the pot. However, I've seen some gardeners who will stick a plant in a pot with no holes, thinking that the water somehow magically disappears, and it doesn’t.

Quentyn Young

Yes. And they often will do that. They will promise themselves, “I’ll just keep an eye on it.” But they forget about it a week later, they’ve forgotten that the pot has no drain holes. And then we have one quick rain. Or you have a neighbor that's watering your plants for you. And if you have this droopy plant, you think oh, it needs more water. And you keep watering it until you realize it's drooping because it's sitting in standing water, it’s waterlogged.

Farmer Fred

And so the first thing you do when you buy a pot to put a plant in, especially a large pot that you're going to be having a tree in, like a small Japanese Maple, make sure the water can get out of that pot and go somewhere. The other potted pot problem people sometimes are guilty of is setting the plant in the container on bare soil.

Quentyn Young

This is exactly what happened to my clients’potted  tree. The roots grew through the hole. And these roots were massive. So not only did the roots fill up the drain hole, but it probably took me a good 45 minutes of moving this pot back and forth, just to be able to tip it over to cut the roots off. And I still actually have to go back with a power saw to cut those roots. That's how massive these roots were. I couldn't get to the angle with my loppers. They were pretty significant tree roots coming out of the bottom of that pot.

Farmer Fred

And that picture of the pot that you have with that Japanese maple that you posted on Instagram looks like a pretty nice pot. So one strategy that you might have employed might not set well with the client, they probably were not willing to maybe have you drill a small hole towards the bottom on the backside to allow some drainage.

Quentyn Young

Actually, I hadn't thought about that. if I had had a drill with the proper porcelain bit. That could have been Plan B. But the drainage hole was pretty big to begin with, it was about the size of  a mandarin when I planted that tree, which  was probably  four or five years ago.  But now that hole was one solid root. So it took me a while to be able to get that pot at an angle to be able to cut that root. It was a bit of a nightmare, but I did it. I still gotta go back with a power saw  to cut more of the root out. And then I want to try to drill some of the root out that’s coming through the drain hole. But all of that could have been prevented if I just been a little bit more preemptive.

Farmer Fred

If it wasn't an inexpensive pot, one easy way of getting it out would be just to break the pot.

Quentyn Young

I've done that in the past.

Farmer Fred

I think we've all done that. And actually now, during the dormant season, winter, it is a good season for repotting waterlogged deciduous trees.

Quentyn Young

Yeah, doing a little bit of root pruning, putting them back in with some fresh potting soil. And if you're lucky, maybe your local garden center is having a sale on pottery this winter.

Farmer Fred

Would you move up a size in containers when you repot?

Quentyn Young

I would. I would try to. But in the past, like with my citrus trees, I just replant them back into the same size pot, but I do do some root pruning first. And like you said, now's a good time, in the dormant season. With my citrus trees, I would want to make sure that I picked all the fruit off first. But now would be a good time, you could sort of with the Japanese maple treated a bit like a bonsai and just do some root pruning and put it back in the same size. But you could go up a size if you want to.

Farmer Fred

Would you wash off the soil, and then repot it into new soil?

Quentyn Young

I would wash off part of the old soil as part of the root pruning and definitely put it in with some new fresh potting soil.

Farmer Fred

And I bet there'd be something under the pot this time around.

Quentyn Young

Yeah, this is a good example of just how time changes things. I had had it on some pieces of brick and things like that same way that we do with the wine barrels at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. But over time, things sink, and they settle into the ground. And that's what allowed the roots to grow through the hole into the ground.

Farmer Fred

And this is a good lesson for anybody with potted plants, don't set them on bare soil because the roots will find the soil below.

Quentyn Young

Yeah, and if you do put them on the soil, go back maybe once a year, tip it over, make sure that it hasn't sunk into the ground.  I had some pots at home that have done the same thing, the pots had settled into the ground and the plant in the pot started to root into the ground. And so luckily, I caught those.

Farmer Fred

Another strategy would be to put something like a plastic plant stand beneath it, that raises the pot maybe an inch or so above the soil and there's a gap.

Quentyn Young

Or use some pieces of broken brick, I have some bamboo in a pot at home, and what I did just to be extra safe, I used 12 by 12’s and 24 by 24’s concrete pavers that you would use to make a path. And I set those pots on those. So that way I know for sure that there's no way that they're going to root into the ground.

Farmer Fred

You're a gambling man.

Quentyn Young

I know. Because it's bamboo.

Farmer Fred

But what the heck, you got to do something. Just raise it off the ground so that there is that air gap between the pot and the soil that will discourage any roots from leaving the pot and getting into the soil. You mentioned though, that in your Instagram post, that this is a big pot, and for one person to handle it, to tip it over to take a look, it took a bit of effort.

Quentyn Young

It did. It took me almost 45 minutes of rocking back and forth, cutting fairly significant roots to be able to turn the pot over on its side to get to that major root ball, which I still have to go back and cut out. But that explains why my clients had me do it.

Farmer Fred

yeah. But this is a good time of the year to do it, during the dormant season, because it's not pushing out new growth at this time. The days are too short, the soil is too cool. And this would be a good time for doing that repotting and root pruning and making sure that your tree hasn't anchored itself into your garden bed.

Quentyn Young

Exactly. Lesson learned.

Farmer Fred

Yes, indeed. So go ahead, check your pots. By the way, this brings up a very good point. Anytime you are watering those containerized plants, make sure that the water is leaving the bottom. Water it by hand with a hose. Stand there and wait until the water leaves the bottom of the pot.

Quentyn Young

That is true. And like I said, if you have a plant that looks droopy, double check to make sure that it's droopy because, especially in the summertime, make sure that it's droopy because it hasn't gotten enough water and not because it is sitting in standing water.

Farmer Fred

Yeah. Which is often the problem too. That's why moisture meters with a good long probe,  12 inches or even 24 inches, can give you a good idea of what's happening at the bottom of the pot. And usually, like you say, it's a stinking thing.

Quentyn Young

Yeah, and that's also a good rule of thumb for houseplants too. People will often overwater houseplants and not realize  the plant roots are sitting in standing water. Those houseplants will start drooping because of lack of oxygen and they'll just keep overwatering. Get a moisture meter and check the bottom of the pot. Or, lift your plant up, check the weight, soon after watering the plant. Note the weight in your head. The next time you go to water, if the potted houseplant is still heavy, it probably doesn’t need water. If it is light in weight, in may need water. There’s a number of different things to make sure that you're not overwatering.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, unless you're Arnold Schwarzenegger, you're not going to be lifting a potted tree up, to figure if that is wet or dry.

Quentyn Young

That's correct.

Farmer Fred

All right. Water: it can be your friend. It can be your enemy. And this is the time of year to check your potted outdoor plants. Make sure that there is drainage going on. Quentyn Young has been our guest. He's on Instagram @ qyounggarden. He is also a Sacramento County Master Gardener. He works in the orchard at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. And they always have a great display of fruit trees, deciduous fruit trees and citrus trees, that you can check out and see how they could work in your landscape. The best event at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center is always the first Saturday in August, that’s Harvest Day. If you're in Northern California on the first Saturday in August, you need to check out Harvest Day at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. Quentyn Young, thanks so much for keeping us high and dry.

Quentyn Young

Thanks for having me on, Fred.

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Unusual Cool Season Vegs (originally aired in Ep 60)

Farmer Fred:

Here on the Garden Basics podcast, we like to expand your horizons a little bit. And there are a lot of great tasting, cool season vegetables that perhaps you may want to try in your own backyard. These might be vegetables that may be rather hard to find at a supermarket. You might find them, maybe, at upscale restaurants. But when's the last time you were in an upscale restaurant? Hmm. And for that matter, they might even be kind of rare at farmer's markets. Yet these could be available at a nursery near you. We're talking with Quentyn Young. And of the cool season vegetables that you brought in this year, Q, what are the popular ones?

Quentyn Young:

I think a lot of the kales are very popular, a lot of the leafy greens, the salad mixes because they're very easy to grow. They don't require a lot of root space. Some of the more unusual broccolis and cauliflowers, unusual Asian greens. Fava beans actually are pretty popular. I like to grow them because I hate spending the money that you have to pay to buy the whole pod at the stores so they're really easy to grow. And they're really easy to shell. So it's a great money saver that way. Onions, garlic, leeks, all of those are doing really well this year.

Farmer Fred:

All right, let's talk about fava beans. Since you brought it up. I know it and we've talked about it on this program as being a great cover crop. But it produces a very edible crop of beans, doesn't it.

Quentyn Young:

Fava beans and then you talked about in the past about eating the tender greens as well. But yeah, they're very easy to grow. Really interesting flower, really interesting to watch the flower attract beneficials. You'll sometimes get some aphids on the fava beans, but I don't mind them because it also brings in the ladybugs in the winter. But they're very easy to grow. You basically just plant them and they germinate within about two three weeks. I soak mine overnight, I think, but they popped up really quickly.

Farmer Fred:

Fava beans, I think is a great crop to get your kids interested for the little ones because it's such a big bean that they can easily plant.

Quentyn Young:

Big beans, easy to plant also very easy to pick, easy to find. I sort of grow mine through my tomato cages to give them a little bit of support. And I do the same with a lot of my I'm always trying different kinds of snap peas. So I also grow those through my tomato cages as well.

Farmer Fred:

And what little kid, and for that matter, what little gardener doesn't like dandelions? I think we've talked on this program about the benefits of actually having dandelions in your lawn, how it helps out the soil and helps water percolate through its extensive root system. Of course everybody loves to blow off the flower head, but dandelion greens... they're a rather tasty treat, aren't they?

Quentyn Young:

They're used a lot in Italian cooking. There's a kind of section of bitter greens like dandelion greens, endive, chicory but the dandelion greens, they're very decorative. They're not your kind of flat rosettes on the ground. They're very upright. They have a very distinctive serrated leaves with a really pretty red rib almost like a chard. They're very productive. Mine got about a foot tall. It was quite a big bunch to basically just grab and cut. I cut them about an inch above the ground and they basically re sprouted again, but really easy to grow and very easy to grow. And I'm growing some in containers this year.

Farmer Fred:

Can you eat them raw or should they be cooked?

Quentyn Young:

You could eat them raw, small. But as they get bigger, they're a little bit tougher and they do hold up to stir frying or sauteeing or putting in soups.

Farmer Fred:

Alright, and they're available in nurseries as plants or as seed.

Quentyn Young:

I'm sure you could find them online as a seed. Also arugala and radicchio as well. So radicchio, endive, those chicories  like most of the leafy greens, they germinate fairly quickly but that's a nice range of other tastes. if you'd like to try them in your salad so some of them actually hold up well to cooking.
 

Farmer Fred:

And for people who haven't perused the lettuce aisle lately at their favorite local nursery. The Salanova line of lettuce greens is very popular and I've grown it and I can see why it's popular. It's easy to grow and last a long time.

Quentyn Young:

Yeah, and very productive and very, a really interesting range of colors and textures of those reds and greens and kind of you know, flat leaves, Brussel leaf, but very, you know really nice look, they would do well in containers as well. And don't forget to throw in if you want to, you know some decorative pansies or violas or calendula, because those also have edible flowers like nasturtiums and those are things that you might not be able to find in the store. Because you know, obviously if you're growing them yourselves you control whether you use chemicals or not use chemicals, but they're a great way to add some interest to salads, throwing some flowers. Calendula is a great, great flower for salads. It's basically called a winter marigold. Adds a nice either yellow or orange color as well as nasturtium flowers. And then the nasturtium leaves. It's a really kind of nice peppery green and then you've got your pansies and violas as well.

Farmer Fred:

Exactly colorful and tasty to boot. Let's talk about some root crops because they can be grown in a wide variety of climates and there are some that you may not find in the supermarket, like a watermelon radish or an icicle radish.

Quentyn Young:

So yeah, the watermelon radishes are really distinctive. They have sort of a chartreuse whitish green outside you cut into them and almost like a little miniature watermelon. They have a really distinct pink center. to me they're fairly mild but they're very decorative. You see them used a lot in and kind of like on salads as a sort of a side dish. I'm growing a white icicle radish this year. They germinated really quickly. I think they were ready in about 45 days. I picked them when they were about finger length and finger width. And I really liked them they were a spicy radish. I'm not sure if the summer heat had anything to do with that when I sowed the seeds. But those are two really distinct radishes that you may not see in the store as well as the French breakfast radishes. Those are also unique. Then also the really hot black Spanish radish, which are harder to find. And that's another nice one if you'd like a hot radish.

Farmer Fred:

Wow, the black Spanish radish, I guess you could serve it with your leftover jalapenos.

Quentyn Young:

Yeah, I mean if you like them hot, There you go. As well as the daikon radish. Daikons are very easy to grow. You'll often see those in your cover crop mixes but daikon radish, another really easy root crop, though might be a little bit longer before you harvest them.

Farmer Fred:

I think what a lot of people don't realize when it comes to root crops that some of the greens of the root crops are edible, like for beets.

Quentyn Young:

Yeah, beet greens, radish greens, and there's a couple of beet varieties that are grown primarily just for the greens and if you grow them for the actual beet, save the greens, you can use those as well. There's quite a few different recipes for how to prepare beet greens and there's quite a few different recipes for radish greens as well. traditional purple beet, your orange beets, white beets which were a little bit sweeter. But there's quite a few different varieties of beets as well.

Farmer Fred:

Tell us about the Chioggia beet.

Quentyn Young:

Chioggia beets are really pretty. it looks like a bullseye when you cut into it. It's one of those heirloom Italian varieties. That's another one that would probably be hard to find in the store.

Farmer Fred:

Another crop that people may not be too familiar with would be some of the Chinese cabbages or Chinese kales.

Quentyn Young:

Yeah, so there's quite a few, you know, people are familiar with, let's say Napa cabbage, which is a little bit different than the European traditional large head cabbage. So you've got Got your Chinese cabbages. And then you'll kind of, you can learn or you know, figure out how you want to grow things like bok choy or tatsoi, or the Shanghai toi, those are all different sort of sizes and shapes. And then you get into, like the Chinese broccoli that has that sort of larger stem with no florets is pretty much a stem and leaf. And then there's the Guy Lon (Chinese broccoli) it has more sort of a purple color to it, often served with the open or slightly open flower buds. And then you've got some of the Japanese greens. So there's quite a range of those that you can grow basically.

Farmer Fred:

Since you brought up the subject of broccoli. Let's talk about some unusual broccoli varieties. I know one that people are starting to talk about a lot is broccolini.

Quentyn Young:

Broccolini. Sometimes it's called Aspabroc, it just really depends. It's a little bit different than Broccoli Raab. So they're two different plants, but they're both prepared in similar ways. You know, you can saute them, that sort of thing, the broccolini has a distinctive, soft stem that often for some people, reminds them of an asparagus spear on the Broccoli Raab is a little bit more bitter. It has more of the the turnip background in its leaves, but both of those, again, leafy greens that you would harvest. You could also eat the undeveloped flower buttons and open flower buds.

Farmer Fred:

And what about sprouting broccoli? What's its story?

Quentyn Young:

Sprouting broccoli? So most people are familiar with the large head-like Marathon or Arcadia, Green Magic, those have sort of a large the typical what I would say grocery store broccoli on that you can be waiting some time for that flower had to develop the sprouting broccolis on, there's some Italian varieties, I think the DiCicco is one of those; English Purple, and they do a lot of little side shoots. And so you pick those instead of waiting for that large flower head to develop. And there's some cauliflower varieties like that as well.

Farmer Fred 2:

Plenty out there for the cool season garden. Things that you may not be familiar with, things that would be a tasty treat for your family. Give them a try. Quentyn Young, is a Sacramento County Master Gardener, landscape designer and purveyor of unusual vegetable varieties. Quentyn thanks for filling our plate up with cool season vegetables.

Quentyn Young:

Thanks for having me on Fred.

“Beyond the Garden Basics” Newsletter - Winter Pruning of Fruit Trees - Two More Views

Farmer Fred

In today’s podcast, we heard from Master Gardener and Landscape Designer Quentyn Young about the benefits of summer pruning of deciduous fruit trees and the drawbacks of winter pruning. Quentin’s primary reason for concentrating on summer fruit tree pruning? The chance of disease hitting open wounds in the winter time due to the seasonal rain. Those cuts heal themselves much slower in colder weather than if they were done in the spring or summer.

But, as you may be aware, in the world of gardening, there are multiple ways of achieving a successful harvest of vegetables, flowers, and fruits without appearing to be harming the plant.  How many times have you heard a fellow gardener utter the phrase, “Well, that’s not the way I’d do it!” And they’re right, because they had success doing it their way.

As Farmer Fred Garden Rule #8 suggests: If it works for you, fine. But keep an open mind. If you're using safe gardening techniques that others might frown upon - and those techniques are working for you…well, who are we to tell you to stop? Still, new research, techniques or equipment may make your chores a heck of a lot easier and satisfying. Today's solution, after all, could become tomorrow's problem. Be open to change.

With that said, in today’s Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, we present a couple of alternatives to fruit tree pruning that include reasons for pruning in the winter as well as summer pruning.

For current newsletter subscribers, look for the “Winter vs summer fruit tree pruning - a couple of alternative viewpoints” in the Beyond the Garden Basics  newsletter in your email, it’s probably waiting for you now.  Or, you can start a subscription, it’s free!  Find the link to the newsletter in today’s show notes or sign up at the newsletter link at our homepage, garden basics dot net. Happy pruning!

Farmer Fred

The Garden Basics With Farmer Fred podcast comes out once a week, on Fridays. Plus the newsletter podcast, that comes with the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, continues, also released on Fridays. Both are free and are brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. The Garden Basics podcast is available wherever podcasts are handed out, and that includes our home page, Garden Basics dot net. , where you can also sign up for the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast. That’s Garden Basics dot net. or use the links in today’s show notes.  And thank you so much for listening.